I hate, hate, hate Microsoft Exchange.

Okay, it's not so much that I hate Exchange, it's that I had the obligatory addons.

I've been working ALL F'N DAY to recover the information store because Symantec AntiVirus suddenly decided that every email attachment we ever received was spam and deleted them. All of them.

So, I restore the backup from last week, and wouldn't you know it, the transaction logs for the past week replayed and re-deleted every single F'ng attachment. Again.

Now I am building another LAN exclusively to set up a new Active Directory Forest, a new Exchange server, restoring the IS on that box and moving all emails with attachments into .PST files for every employee.

To be fair, the culprit is NOT Microsoft Windows NOR is it Exchange - it's a third-party solution. Because SpamAssassin and ClamAV used to be such a pain in the neck to set up on Windows, I went with a commercial solution that does both. However: So: My goal is to get OFF Microsoft Exchange by the end of the year. So, I'm now considering Postfix for email, but am really looking for a true integrated, OSS groupware solution with support for group scheduling and task lists.

Anyway, hopefully I will have the Microsoft shackles off my ankles by the new year!

Good, well thought out rant though Good luck with Postfix, hope it solves your problem....

Postfix rocks.. don't let david_ross tell you otherwise..

trickykid,

Well, I thought Linux-General was more appropriate because although I didn't make it explicit, I was kind of looking for feedback on what others did to punt Exchange but not lose any functionality. Microsoft has its many faults, but a bad groupware solution (in terms of both feature set and maintenance tools) is not one of them.

When I need to run maintenance on the Exchange server, it's easy. Granted, I need to take the IS offline to perform it, but there are integrity checkers and everything - and what's more, it's all documented. I can't say the same for postfix or sendmail. Microsoft has been very, very good about this ever since the days of M$ Mail. I've looked at postfix and sendmail books and while I've configured it in many environments (never my own) I've yet to come across a good resource for:

* postfix maintenance
* postfix disaster recovery
* sendmail maintenance
* sendmail disaster recovery
* PostgreSQL maintenance
* MySQL maintenance (I'll probably go MySQL on the Postfix back end if we go postfix)

Documentation in that area on all of the above is very weak where maintenance is concerned.